ago. Some infernal chattering women were talking a lot of rot about the
planters in Fiji having very pretty and privileged native servants--and
all that, you know. She fired up and denied it, but came and asked me if
it was true, and I was mean enough not to give it a straight denial. How
the devil it happened I can't tell you, but we danced a deuce of a lot
and I lost my senses and asked her again, and she said 'Yes.' Had she
been any other woman but Miss ------, I would have concluded that the
soft music and all that had dazed her. It does sometimes--lots of 'em;
makes the most virtuous wife wish she could be a sinner and resume her
normal goodness next day. But Kitty is different. And it was only that
infernal twaddle caused it and made her write you that letter. A week
hadn't passed before she wrote to me and told me how miserable she was.
But I knew all through she didn't care a d------about me. And that's the
way it occurred, old man."

Hilliard's hand met his. "Say no more about it, Lamington; it's a _mea
mate_ as we say here--a thing that is past."

"But, good God, old fellow, you don't understand. She's written ever so
many times to you. No one in Levuka knew where you had gone to; there's
thousands of islands in the South Seas. And this letter here," he held
it toward him, "she gave to me, and I promised her on my honour as a man
to effect an exchange into the _Petrel_ and find you."

"Thanks, Lamington. You always were a good fellow." He laid the letter
on the table quietly and rose and got the rum.

*****

A young native girl, with deep lustrous eyes shining from a face of
almost childish innocence, had entered the door and stood with one bare
and softly-rounded arm clasped round the neck of Alberti's little son.
Her lips parted in a smile as Lamington, with a gasping cough, set down
his glass after drinking the potent spirit, and she set her brows
in mock ferocity at Hilliard who drank his down like an old-time
beachcomber.

"By Jove, Hilliard, what an astonishingly pretty face! She could give
any New Orleans creole points. Time you got out of this before some of
the Rotumah beauties make you forget things; and oh, by the way, I'm
forgetting things. Remember you are to come aboard and dine with us
to-night, and that you're in indifferent health, and that Captain
------, of Her Majesty's ship _Petrel_ is going to give you a passage to
Sydney."

At an angry sign from Hilliard the girl disappeared. Th